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Miccaela d'Oro
Miccaela d'Oro (b. 1545) is the protagonist of Fire Tests Gold. Miccaeli would love to be cordial and lovely to everybody, but she has a tendency to be a tad awkward without meaning to be. Where she fails at courtesy, however, she shines in wit. Most of said wit is derived from years of childishly teasing people with Bradley, so her humour doesn't quite fit into the parts of court that she wishes it did. Miccaeli tends to pick at her food and try a bit of everything. Bradley tells her this comes in handy at feasts, and encourages her to try little bits of everything. Because of her pickiness, she is a skinny little thing, and Bradley claims that a nudge from her elbow could draw blood. Her mother tries to feed her up as best she can, as Miccaeli has a liking for Germanic cuisine. Miccaeli finds the rustic nature of her mother's cooking endearing. Sometimes she fantasises about living in the countryside and reading books forever and ever, but she is happy with her life at court as well. Miccaeli loathes pantomines, especially vulgar ones, and doesn't like how they almost always turn up at parties. (Not only because the jokes go over her head, but because it's loud and rude.) She prefers to sneak off to private showings of plays that are romantic or tragic. Miccaeli prefers court at face value: the dances, the courtesies, the food and the kindly servants and hosts. She dislikes the after parties where sex is rampant and everyone seems to lose their chivalry. Miccaeli tends to like people who like her. If they decide she's awful, she assumes it is some flaw in their character rather than hers, and doesn't put much thought into it. Her favourite colour is sky blue, but she pretends it's deep violet because she knows that's the rarest to get and likes seeing if people will try and get it for her. Miccaeli attends church regularly and acknowledges holy days, and has a rosary that Bradley gave her which she takes to Mass on occasion. (Most of the time, however, she keeps it in her room with all her jewellery and precious things.) Miccaeli especially likes singing hymns and listening to stories about brave saints. She's very superstitious. She likes sitting for portraits. It's not vanity, per se, it's just that she likes the thought of somebody putting effort into recreating her. When she was younger, Bradley and her would play a game where he would pretend to be an artist asking her to sit for a portrait. He'd converse with her and occasionally ask her to change her place or stay a certain way, but never actually draw anything. *Miccaeli has a golden rosary on her dressing table that Alessio gave her for the Christmas of 1558. She almost never takes it to Mass because she's terrified of losing it. *Miccaeli's character development is based off the theory of a "golden mean" - the golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example courage, a virtue, if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness and if deficient as cowardice. At the beginning of Fire Tests Gold, Miccaeli is .. childish. She reads fairy tales, she adores songs, she thinks everyone is good at heart. She believes in happy endings where the villain is defeated easily and love triumphs over all. Whenever someone confides in Miccaeli, Miccaeli simply tells them that it's all going to be okay, even if she has no evidence of that. It's just a fact to her and she acts accordingly. For example, if her father was sad, she'd simply act as she usually would around him. How she acts around him usually is affectionate, so it's a .. genuine sort of comfort. She's very observant in this way, but many people don't notice it at first. Miccaeli is a very upfront person and she's honest, but she doesn't speak out of turn. Gastone's introduction and Alma's illness both occur around the same time, and affect Miccaeli in similar ways. In both situations, Miccaeli is forced to act as though everything is alright when something is terribly, terribly wrong which everybody seems to keep quiet about. Of course, Miccaeli doesn't fully realise the gravity of either situation at first, because of how others act about them. Everyone avoids speaking frankly about Alma's sickness, and everyone ignores Gastone's outbursts and keeps them from Miccaeli. Tatiana is the one who inspires Miccaeli to ask questions, and if those questions are ignored, to find answers. When Gastone first starts abusing Miccaeli, Tatiana picks up on it and talks to her about how to deal with it. Miccaeli learns to bide her time. When Gastone hits her, she takes note of it and the situation it occurred in and puts that in her pocket. When Micheletto begins visiting the family more than often, she takes note of that. She's always been good at observing, but she begins to keep things in mind and actually let those things affect how she behaves. For example, start!Miccaeli would act regularly around Gastone if he was frustrated. But once she learns that he tends to hit her if she bothers him when he's annoyed, she acts more reserved and obedient. Miccaeli still has her belief that everyone has goodness in them, and she wants to find that in Gastone. She believes she's doing something wrong, so that's why she starts changing her behaviour - so she can be better for him and he'll be better to her. Dancing on over to the Alma situation.. Miccaeli has very little influence over what goes on with her mother. She visits her mother each night, but there's not much she can do. Adruino doesn't like discussing Alma with her, and Alessio is sheltering Miccaeli from any srs bsns discussions unless Miccaeli asks, then he relents slightly. Micheletto starts visiting more often, but he doesn't go to Alma's room. Instead, he sees Adruino. Miccaeli notices this, because the servants never mention him visiting Alma or recommending any new treatments. Miccaeli tries taking her mother's health into her own hands at Dana's encouragement, and tries things like leaving herbs under Alma's pillow. I want to take a moment out to appreciate adult!Miccaeli, who may or may not be my favourite character. If adult versions of characters count as separate to their child selves. Moment over. Miccaeli begins to dislike the idea of spending her life with Gastone more and more. Luckily for her, he ends up trolololo'ing off to Rome for business for a while. While Gastone is gone, Miccaeli spends most of her time with her family and Dana. Alessio is becoming visibly stressed over the Alma situation. This is where the homunculus bit would start to fit in, I guess, but I'm going to skip over the climax right now and edit this post once we figure out the killing-Alma sitch better. I'd like to point out that Gastone's emotional (and to a lesser extent, physical) abuse of Miccaeli is definitely not gratuitous. From a thematic view, it is a representation of the fact that Miccaeli direly needs to adapt and become more self-aware when it comes to both home life and court life. While Miccaeli never stands up to Gastone outright (other than the balcony scene), what she does is definitely less of a coping mechanism and more of a survival one. She does go through the typical reaction to domestic abuse - blaming one's self, denying the seriousness of it - but she manages to keep her self intact and isn't brought down by it as much as she could be because she learns to find a quiet power. However, Gastone is never at all aware of Miccaeli's development and the fact that she's not just a stupid little girl, and Gastone is stupid and should be hated. An important thing about Miccaeli's arc is that she is the golden mean. She is the balance between emotion (Alessio, Adruino) and logic (Tatiana, Alma). Between silent and deafening. Ignorance and cunning. Throughout the entire novel, she maintains her liking for fanciful things like fairy tales and songs, but she understands that they are not necessarily representative of real life. They are, however, to be appreciated just as much as any aspect of one's life. Miccaeli's arc affects Miccessio very slightly. She becomes aware of the fact that they will never be together. This isn't explicitly stated, Miccaeli doesn't view her and Alessio like normal couples. She views them like Lancelot and Guinevere, like Abelard and Heloise, like Tristan and Iseult. But Miccaeli does begin to treat Alessio more as a brother than as a lover throughout FTG, not necessarily because she wants the relationship to be more platonic, but because of her engagement to Gastone, she knows that all Alessio can ever be is her brother. She wants to build the platonic part of their relationship to be just as fulfilling and affectionate as the romantic part. (When I say romantic, I mean in the context of romanticism, not necessarily lovey-doveyness.) However, she does get jealous of Tatiana and Alessio's .. broship. (Also, my headcanon of Miccaeli coming back from her convent/dead husband and accepting her feelings for Alessio still sticks. I do think that Miccaeli and Alessio would get together in their future, when Miccaeli was older and Alessio could learn to accept himself more.) I'm basically trying to build Miccaeli and Alessio individually, but so that their personalities complement each other and work together. There's two quotes I look to when I'm trying to figure out their relationship's mechanics: "Sometimes I think a soulmate is someone who will make you be the most 'you' that you could possibly be." and "Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same." They're not just a gratuitous incestuous couple. (I'm saying 'gratuitous' a lot, but it's important to me that everything in this novel means something and has a purpose.) They're not as intensely connected as Cersei and Jaime from ASOIAF (Cersei and Jaime are twins, and feel as though they're one person in two bodies), they're very much their own people and don't need to be compared to one another to be appreciated. It's just that they are literally the perfect option for each other when it comes to spending the rest of your life with somebody, and they both see each other in a romantic way. Neither Alessio or Miccaeli experience any angst over the idea of condemnation for incest, because they just don't see each other that way. When Alessio imagines himself with Miccaeli, it's not in a carnal way, although that is a silently recognised factor. He is not taking advantage of her fanciful perceptions, and he never does. A big elephant in the room when it comes to Miccessio circa-FTG is how aware Miccaeli is of Alessio's feelings for her. I think they have an unspoken bond of sorts, and if Miccaeli said that she and Alessio were inseparable souls, he'd not be surprised and vice versa. There's no real "dominant" person in the relationship, who is more in control depends on the situation. e.g. when Alessio is upset, Miccaeli is more in control, and when Alessio is taking Miccaeli somewhere public, he has more control because he's her elder and has to look after her. When Dana thinks about her future soulmate and discusses the idea with Miccaeli, Miccaeli personally connotates this with Alessio. If she was asked as to her "significant other", her mind would go to Alessio rather than Gastone (though she wouldn't verbalise this, obviously). Biography Early life During Fire Tests Gold Postseries Category:Fire Tests Gold Category:Fire Tests Gold characters